The White Guard (10 page)

   As the fall turned to winter death soon came to the Ukraine with the first dry, driven snow. The rattle of machine-gun fire began to be heard in the woods. Death itself remained unseen, but its unmistakable herald was a wave of crude, elemental peasant fury which ran amok through the cold and the snow, a fury in torn bast shoes, straws in its matted hair; a fury which howled. It held in its hands a huge club, without which no great change in Russia, it seems, can ever take place. Here and there 'the red rooster crowed' as farms and hayricks burned, in other places the purple sunset would reveal a Jewish innkeeper strung up by his sexual organs. There were strange sights, too, in Poland's fair capital of Warsaw: high on his plinth Henryk Sienkiewicz smiled with grim satisfaction. Then it was as if all the devils in hell were let loose. Priests shook the green cupolas of their little churches with bell-ringing, whilst next door in the schoolhouses, their windows shattered by rifle bullets, the people sang revolutionary songs.

   It was a time and a place of suffocating uncertainty. So - to hell

   with it! It was all a myth. Petlyura was a myth. He didn't exist. It was a myth as remarkable as an older myth of the non-existent Napoleon Bonaparte, but a great deal less colorful. But something had to be done. That outburst of elemental peasant wrath had somehow to be channelled into a certain direction, because no magic wand could conjure it away.

   It was very simple. There would be trouble; but the men to deal with it would be found. And there appeared a certain Colonel Toropetz. It turned out that he had sprung from no less than the Austrian army . . .

   'You can't mean it?'

   'I assure you he has.'

   Then there emerged a writer called Vinnichenko, famous for two things - his novels and the fact that as far back as the beginning of 1918 fate had thrown him up to the surface of the troubled sea that was the Ukraine, and that without a second's delay the satirical journals of St Petersburg had branded him a traitor.

   'And serves him right . . .'

   'Well, I'm not so sure. And then there's that mysterious man who was released from prison.'

   Even in September no one in the City could imagine what these three men might be up to, whose only apparent talent was the ability to turn up at the right moment in such an insignificant place as Belaya Tserkov. By October people were speculating furiously about them, when those brilliantly-lit trains full of German officers pulled out of the City into the gaping void that was the new-born state of Poland, and headed for Germany. Telegrams flew. Away went the diamonds, the shifty eyes, the slicked-down hair and the money. They fled southwards, southwards to the seaport city of Odessa. By November, alas, everyone knew with fair certainty what was afoot. The word 'Petlyura' echoed from every wall, from the gray paper of telegraph forms. In the mornings it dripped from the pages of newspapers into the coffee, immediately turning that nectar of the tropics into disgusting brown swill. It flew from tongue to tongue, and was tapped out by telegraphists' fingers on morse keys. Extraordinary things began happening in the City thanks to that name, which the Germans mispronounced as 'Peturra'.

   Individual German soldiers, who had acquired the bad habit of lurching drunkenly around in the suburbs, began disappearing in the night. They would vanish one night and the next day they would be found murdered. So German patrols in their tin hats were sent around the City at night, marching with lanterns to put an end to the outrages. But no amount of lanterns could dissolve the murky thoughts brewing in people's heads.

   Wilhelm. Three Germans murdered yesterday. Oh God, the Germans are leaving - have you heard? The workers have arrested Trotsky in Moscow!! Some sons of bitches held up a train near Borodyanka and stripped it clean. Petlyura has sent an embassy to Paris. Wilhelm again. Black Senegalese in Odessa. A mysterious, unknown name - Consul Enno. Odessa. General Denikin. Wilhelm again. The Germans are leaving, the French are coming.

   'The Bolsheviks are coming, brother!'

   'Don't say such things!'

   The Germans have a special device with a revolving pointer -they put it on the ground and the pointer swings round to show where there are arms buried in the ground. That's a joke. Petlyura has sent a mission to the Bolsheviks. That's an even better joke. Petlyura. Petlyura. Petlyura. Peturra. . . .

   
#

   There was not a single person who really knew what this man Peturra wanted to do in the Ukraine though everyone knew for sure that he was mysterious and faceless (even though the newspapers had frequently printed any number of pictures of Catholic prelates, every one different, captioned 'Simon Petlyura') and that he wanted to seize the Ukraine. To do that he would advance and capture the City.

   Madame Anjou's shop, Le chic parisien, was in the very center of the City, on Theater Street, behind the Opera House, on the first floor of a large multi-storied building. Three steps led up from the street through a glass door into the shop, while on either side of the glass door were two large plate-glass windows draped with dusty tulle drapes. No one knew what had become of Madame Anjou or why the premises of her shop had been put to such uncommercial use. In the left-hand window was a colored drawing of a lady's hat with 'Chic parisien' in golden letters; but behind the glass of the right-hand window was a huge poster in yellow cardboard showing the crossed-cannon badge of the artillery. Above it were the words:

   'You may not be a hero - but you must volunteer.' Beneath the crossed cannon it read:

   'Volunteers for the Mortar Regiment may enlist here.'

   Parked at the entrance to the shop was a filthy and dilapidated motor-cycle and sidecar. The door with its spring-closure was constantly opening and slamming and every time it opened a charming little bell rang - trrring-trrring - recalling the dear, dead days of Madame Anjou.

   After their drunken evening together Alexei Turbin, Mysh-laevsky and Karas got up next morning almost simultaneously. All, to their amazement, had thoroughly clear heads, although the hour was a little late - around noon in fact. Nikolka and Shervinsky, it seemed, had already gone out. Very early that morning Nikolka had wrapped up a mysterious little red bundle and creaking on tiptoe out of the house had set off for his infantry detachment, whilst Shervinsky had returned to duty at General Headquarters.

   Stripped to the waist in Anyuta's room behind the kitchen, where the geyser and the bath stood behind a drape, Myshlaevsky poured a stream of ice-cold water over his neck, back and head, and shouted, howling with the delicious shock; 'Ugh! Hah! Splendid!' and showered everything with water for a yard around him. Then he rubbed himself dry with a Turkish towel, dressed, anointed his head with brilliantine, combed his hair and said to Alexei:

   'Er, Alyosha ... be a friend and lend me your spurs, would you? I won't be going home and I don't like to turn up without spurs.'

   'You'll find them in the study, in the right-hand desk drawer.'

   Myshlaevsky went into the study, fumbled around, and marched out clinking. Dark-eyed Anyuta, who had returned that morning from staying with her aunt, was flicking a feather duster over the chairs in the sitting room. Clearing his throat Myshlaevsky glanced at the door, made a wide detour and said softly:

   'Hullo, Anyuta . . .'

   'I'll tell Elena Vasilievna', Anyuta at once whispered automatically. She closed her eyes like a condemned victim awaiting the executioner's axe.

   'Silly girl...'

   Alexei Turbin appeared unexpectedly in the doorway. His expression turned sour.

   'Examining our feather duster, Viktor? So I see. Nice one, isn't it? Hadn't you better be on your way? Anyuta, remember in case he tells you he'll marry you, don't believe it - he never will.'

   'Hell, I was only saying hullo . . .' Myshlaevsky reddened at the undeserved slight, stuck out his chest and strode clinking out of the drawing-room. At the sight of the elegant, auburn-haired Elena in the dining-room he looked uncomfortable.

   'Good morning, Lena my sweet. Err . . . h'mmm' (Instead of a metallic tenor Myshlaevsky's voice came out of his throat as a low, hoarse baritone), 'Lena, my dear,' he burst out with feeling, 'don't be cross with me. I'm so fond of you and I want you to be fond of me. Please forget my disgusting behaviour yesterday. You don't think I'm really such a beast, do you?'

   So saying he clasped Elena in an embrace and kissed her on both cheeks. In the drawing-room the feather duster fell to the ground with a gentle thud. The oddest things always happened to Anyuta whenever Lieutenant Myshlaevsky appeared in the Turbins' apartment. All sorts of household utensils would start slipping from her grasp: if she happened to be in the kitchen knives would cascade to the floor or plates would tumble down from the dresser. Anyuta would look distracted and run out into the lobby for no reason, where she would fiddle around with the overshoes, wiping them with a rag until Myshlaevsky, all cleft chin and broad shoulders, swaggered out again in his blue breeches and short, very low-slung spurs. Then Anyuta would close her eyes and sidle out of her cramped hiding-place in the boot-closet. Now in the drawing-room, having dropped her feather duster, she was standing and gazing abstractedly into the distance past the chintz curtains and out at the gray, cloudy sky.

   'Oh, Viktor, Viktor,' said Elena, shaking her carefully-brushed diadem of hair, 'you look healthy enough - what made you so feeble yesterday? Sit down and have a cup of tea, it may make you feel better.'

   'And you look gorgeous today, Lena, by God you do. That cloak suits you wonderfully, I swear it does', said Myshlaevsky ingratiatingly, his glance darting nervously back and forth to the polished sideboard. 'Look at her cloak, Karas. Isn't it a perfect shade of green?'

   'Elena Vasilievna is very beautiful', Karas replied earnestly and with absolute sincerity.

   'It's the electric light that makes it look this color', Elena explained. 'Come on, Viktor, out with it - you want something, don't you?'

   'Well, the fact is, Lena dearest, I could so easily get an attack of migraine after last night's business and I can't go out and fight if I've got migraine . . .'

   'All right, it's in the sideboard.'

   'Thanks. Just one small glass . . . better than all the aspirin in the world.'

   With a martyred grimace Myshlaevsky tossed back two glasses of vodka one after the other, in between bites of the soggy remains

   of last night's dill pickles. After that he announced that he felt like a new-born babe and said he would like a glass of lemon tea.

   'Don't let yourself worry, Lena,' Alexei Turbin was saying hoarsely, 'I won't be long. I shall just go and sign on as a volunteer and then I shall come straight back home. Don't worry,*there won't be any fighting. We shall just sit tight here in the City and beat off "president" Petlyura, the swine.'

   'May you not be ordered away somewhere?'

   Karas gestured reassuringly.

   'Don't worry, Elena Vasilievna. Firstly I might as well tell you that the regiment can't possibly be ready in less than a fortnight; we still have no horses and no ammunition. Even when we are ready there's not the slightest doubt that we shall stay in the City. The army we're forming will undoubtedly be used to garrison the City. Later on, of course, in case of an advance on Moscow . . .'

   'That's pure guess-work, though, and I'll believe it when I see it . . .'

   'Before that happens we shall have to link up with Denikin . . .'

   'You don't have to try so hard to comfort me', said Elena. 'I'm not afraid. On the contrary, I approve of what you're doing.'

   Elena sounded genuinely bold and confident; from her expression she was already absorbed with the mundane problems of daily life: sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.

   'Anyuta,' she shouted, 'Anyuta dear, Lieutenant Myshlaevsky's dirty clothes are out there on the verandah. Give them a good hard brush and then wash them right away.'

   The person who had the most calming effect on Elena was the short, stocky Karas, who sat there very calmly in his khaki tunic, smoking and frowning.

   They said goodbye in the lobby.

   'God bless you all', said Elena grimly as she made the sign of the cross over Alexei, then over Karas and Myshlaevsky. Myshlaevsky hugged her, and Karas, his greatcoat tightly belted in at the waist, blushed and gently kissed both her hands.

   
#

   'Permission to report, colonel', said Karas, his spurs clinking gently as he saluted.

   The colonel was seated at a little desk in a low, green, very feminine armchair on a kind of raised platform in the front of the shop. Pieces of blue cardboard hat boxes labelled 'Madame Anjou, Ladies' millinery' rose behind him, shutting out some of the light from the dusty window hung with lacy tulle. The colonel was holding a pen. He was not really a colonel but a lieutenant colonel, with three stars on broad gold shoulder-straps divided lengthwise by two coloured strips and surmounted by golden crossed cannon. The colonel was slightly older than Alexei Turbin himself- about thirty, or thirty-two at the most. His face, well fed and clean shaven, was adorned by a black moustache clipped American-style. His extremely lively and intelligent eyes looked up, obviously tired but attentive.

   Around the colonel was primeval chaos. Two paces away from him a fire was crackling in a little black stove while occasional blobs of soot dripped from its long, angular black flue, extending over a partition and away into the depths of the shop. The floor, both on the raised platform and in the rest of the shop, was littered with scraps of paper and green and red snippets of material. Higher still, on a raised balcony above the colonel's head a typewriter pecked and clattered like a nervous bird and when Alexei Turbin raised his head he saw that it was twittering away behind a balustrade almost at the height of the shop's ceiling. Behind the railings he could just see someone's legs and bottom encased in blue breeches, but whose head was cut off by the line of the ceiling. A second typewriter was clicking away in the left-hand half of the shop, in a mysterious pit, in which could be seen the bright shoulder-straps and blond head of a volunteer clerk, but no arms and no legs.